Jewish officials this week welcomed the life sentence given a Palestinian man who planned to detonate a nail-packed bomb on a subway bound for Borough Park.
“This is an appropriate punishment for the threat he posed to the Jewish community,” said Adam Segall, director of the New York region of the Anti-Defamation League.
Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar, 25, a West Bank native, was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years for constructing a pipe bomb and conspiring to use it on a B train likely to be filled with Jews who live in Borough Park, a heavily chasidic section of Brooklyn. Under federal guidelines, he is not eligible for parole.
At his sentencing in Brooklyn Federal Court before Judge Reena Raggi, Abu Maizar denied the Holocaust and recited a litany of grievances against the Jewish people and Israel.
Phillip Baum, director of the American Jewish Congress, called Abu Maizar and other terrorists “a threat not only to the Jewish community but to stable society everywhere.”
Abu Maizar and his roommate, Lafi Khalil, were arrested in July 1997, when police acting on a tip burst into their Park Slope apartment and found the completed bombs. Both men were shot while trying to detonate the devices, police said. Khalil, also a West Bank native, was acquitted of the bomb charges, but was sentenced to three years in prison on an immigration violation.
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